It’s all in with the US of A

Declaring the US to be “all in" Asia,
Barack Obama
has sought to seize control of the region’s new economic and strategic architecture and has taken Australia along for the ride.

The President needed to do two things in order to take a seat at the East Asia Summit in Bali tomorrow with new American credibility, after being distracted from the world’s main growth zone by the Middle East wars and financial upheaval at home.

He needed to dispel the spectre of American decline by putting some resources behind the new doctrine of re-engagement and he needed to couch the message for a rising Asia as more than just the revival of the old US “hub and spokes" approach to managing regional affairs.

The Obama doctrine delivered in Canberra did both things and Australia was more than just the platform for this pivot in US foreign policy – it was central to both legs of the new approach.

US officials say the US Asian military commitment will get special treatment in the current budget and the marines’ rotation into Darwin has been given priority within the marines’ global budget in what is Obama’s first statement on military priorities in the current deficit-cutting negotiations.

And Obama has taken the bold step of restating the truism that foreign military strength is built on domestic economic strength, which may well become a benchmark for US regional credibility in the future.

Combined with his Trans-Pacific Partnership trade initiative at last weekend’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group summit, the base deal and yesterday’s address to Parliament give Obama serious momentum going into tomorrow’s East Asia Summit, which the US and Russian leaders are joining for the first time.

While the US diversion into less than successful nation building in the Middle East is well documented, it is less appreciated that it also miscalculated the Asian momentum towards a new regional summit in the EAS in recent years, which was away from APEC and in search of a new way to manage regional tensions.

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The Howard government appreciated the need to get Australia in the door of this new institution building and
Kevin Rudd
saw the importance of the US re-engaging Asia in a multilateral forum rather than via the old system where the US was at the centre of a set of bilateral security alliances like ANZUS.

Obama has now embraced regional institutions such as the EAS, reflecting the reality that modern challenges, for instance maritime security, disaster management and currency rebalancing, need to be discussed amongst the many countries involved.

Like Australia, most Asian countries are increasingly dependent on China for economic growth, but alarmed at recent Chinese intransigence over territorial claims in the South China Sea and whether these are a sign of even more assertiveness in years to come.

They welcome the US military presence but prefer to avoid being caught in the diplomatic crossfire between China and the US by thrashing out concern in broader groups such as the EAS.

The EAS is only a summit and not actually an institution yet, but the presence of the US and Russia should elevate it from its origins in South-East Asia to a global level forum, which can deal with issues such as tensions on the Korean peninsula and how to avoid a military accident in contested maritime territory.

Thus far China has tended to exercise considerable influence in the group, but that dynamic will change tomorrow with Obama’s attendance, although he has been astute to pave the way by emphasising global rules on issues like trade and human rights which China is welcome to join.

However, after a careful build-up in recent months to this week’s US “return" to Asia, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
in Manila on Wednesday escalated the rivalry with China quite sharply by referring to the contested South China Sea as the West Philippines Sea.

Indonesia’s veiled criticism of the marines deal underlines how regional opinion can be mercurial when confronted by the spectre of US-China tension, although the Indonesian position is probably better explained by concern that the US has been setting the EAS agenda before actually arriving in Bali.

Obama appears to have won the first round in this new struggle over the strategic direction of Asia, but it will now be interesting to watch how America’s banker in China responds when it has been working the territory assiduously while the US has been AWOL.

The older pre-EAS gathering of China, Japan and South Korea with the 10 countries of South-East Asia this afternoon may well be the venue for China to try to regain the driver’s seat.